Gentle Worlds
by Lost Duck Inc
Summary: Make love, not war. Alfred would have more than killed to be able to follow that ideal, but he had always been, and would always be, one of those people who made love while being in the middle of a war at the same time. USUK.
1. The Strange Day At Rozetta

_Gentle Worlds_

**Author's Note:**

**This is my first foray into the world of Hetalia. Well, I hope you will find it rather enjoyable. It certainly had been an enjoyable experience for me, writing this first chapter.**

**Disclaimer:**** Himaruya owns Hetalia.**

**Soundtrack:**

'**Après Moi' by Regina Spektor**

XXX

_Spring, 2084_

On the eighth of May, the world ended.

It collapsed thoroughly, flat-lined through a fitful seven-and-a-half minutes, based on calculations by scientists published in various newspapers across the globe on the next day, before clambering up to its feet and starting to move again.

"Only this time, it's no miraculous reconciliation," a tense Gwen Kirkland said in a press conference. "Humanity is running on its third leg, practically jetting into darkness on its afterburners. The current world is a zombie of what it used to be. The moment the magic that holds this golem upright runs out, human civilisation will freefall back into Stone Age."

The confrontation coming from his son later that night was expected. The moment they were both comfortably seated in library of the Kirklands' London residence, twenty-seven-year-old Arthur promptly forgot his cooling tea and said, with as much vehemence his manners would allow him, "Bloody hell! What was that about, Mother? You're a scientist, the Chief Scientist of Rozetta Research Institute, for fuck's sake! Not a bloody fantasy writer!"

"Well, I've always wanted to be one, so I might as well fucking talk like one," she pointed out, smirking triumphantly—over what, only God knew. She rose up from the couch and went towards the gilded mirror hanging on the far wall, across the slumbering fireplace. Running one hair through her sandy blonde hair, she grinned and said, "Not bad for a woman turning forty-five, right? Maybe it's high time for me to quit biotechnology and return to my parchment and quill…."

"…Parchment and quill?" Both Arthur's eyebrows went up and disappeared beneath his bangs. "Bollocks! What about the people?"

Gwen made a grimace, scrunching up her face. It was then that Arthur noticed the lines on her face, spidering from the corners of her eyes and lips. Although her spirit was trapped in the state of a twenty-one-year-old college girl and her energy level was frozen in a seventeen-year-old's, she was forty five, and that was it: Time might have been a gentler deity on her than on other people, but concessions did not mean she was allowed to escape unscathed.

Turning in wide-eyed innocence at her son, she shrugged and said, "…Guess we're all doomed, eh?"

His hand trembled as he reached for his teacup. "What—just like that?" he asked hoarsely, almost laughing at the bitterness of it all. Having a spirit younger than Arthur, her very own son, naturally Arthur always viewed her as the greatest optimist in the Kirkland household, in Rozetta, where strode bearded misanthropic professors preaching about the end of the world, in the community of glum-faced politicians, among which Alistair Kirkland worked, and in the whole world, if you did not count all those grinning, fairies-and-sugar idiots, namely children and some specimens in the asylums. "Just like that?"

"It's not like we have any other choice," Gwen pouted, gathering her hair up into a bun. "Arthur, my darling, Senta was our last hope for a sustainable fuel. By my estimation, we had, oh, one year left of fossil fuel, give or take a couple of months."

His tea was sloshing wildly in his cup. Noticing it was because he was shaking all over, he gripped the edge of the round coffee table until his knuckles turned bleach-white. "And that fuel—that last hope—just went out like that?"

"Not exactly _like that_," Gwen sighed, speaking to her reflection. "The whole reactor practically went _ka-boom_! Kill all the scientists in the lab, it did. The whole Senta lab, the whole frigging facility, was on fire. Took it seven-and-a-half minutes to release all its energy and break through the protection of the lab. By now, its energy field must have encompassed the whole globe." The grandfather clock at the corner let out a terrible chime; it was midnight. She threw it a wry glance. "Alistair is coming late without calling me. _Again_."

The girlish pout in her intonation caused his anger to flare up, a brief but sharp spurt of red across his vision. "You're giving a verdict on the end of civilisation. And you are still so calm. You know how fucking hard this is for father," he spat, shoulders trembling in his dress shirt. "His wife invented a fuel that could have saved humanity, but it went bloody straight down to hell before it could do anybody any freaking good!"

His mother did not even flinch from her son's emotional outburst. Her smile did not waver, much less budge. "I did, didn't I?" she chuckled. Arthur would have lunged at her throat right then and there, only she moved, crossing the room, past the anger-paralysed Arthur, and towards the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony. She threw open the heavy curtains, and held her arms up in the air as the blinding light of midnight rushed through the glass and claimed her.

It was brighter than the day itself, Arthur realised in fear, shielding his eyes against the light. Gwen's body was nothing but a dark, humanoid silhouette.

The silhouette spoke, "Photons form Senta." The bodiless voice adopted a keening wail, and Arthur had to clap his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. It was so bright that he could _hear_ the light, the jetting photons from between the gaps of his fingers. "All the energy from Senta is my child," the shadow cried, "and now it has gone! Gone and freed itself!"

He had to scream against the noise of the light and the shadow's cries. "Mother!" he called. "Fuck! Gwen! Close the damn curtains!"

After a lag time of a second that felt like a whole minute, the shadow dropped its arms. The curtains fell over the light in a matter of an instant, and Gwen turned her back against their dark folds and staggered back to the couch.

"Your father must be having a bloody hard day," she sighed, stretching luxuriously against the soft fabric of the couch. Arthur refused to reply; he simply stared. "Wake up when the git comes home," she mumbled sleepily. "For him, his world ended at eight thirty-two in the morning, when Senta exploded. I have to comfort him and offer him my condolences."

"Hell yeah," she heard Arthur reply; however, she was already slipping into a dream, where she could see her husband, head bent over his desk, with the top two buttons of his shirt left open, and his tie missing. Such a rare sight it was….

XXX

Alistair Kirkland had his head bent over his desk, with the top two buttons of his shirt left open, and his tie missing. Although his young guest did not know it, it was actually such a rare sight. Not even Gwen had seen his husband's attire in a state of disarray, except in their preludes to sex, and after she had had her nimble hands all over his body. If Arthur had seen Alistair at that time, he would have had difficulties identifying him as his father; after all, it was from his father that Arthur inherited his immaculate way of dressing.

Finally, he looked up from the screen of his laptop and gazed at his guest with tired eyes. "I like you," he suddenly said, grinning affably from the top of his laptop. "You don't fidget. Most people do that when they start thinking that they've been waiting too long."

His guest blinked his only good eye in surprise. The left eye was covered by a medical eye patch. Alistair decided that he liked the eye patch. It made the youngster look like a pirate.

"Um, I guess it comes from military training, sir," the boy said, laughing nervously. His eye appeared dark blue under the poor lighting of the candles, a side effect from not having the convenient fossil fuel handy. They did not have enough solar panels already, so he volunteered to make his own sacrifice—_noblesse oblige_ and all that crap he could not believe he actually _did_ believe in. Absently, Alistair wondered what shade the eye would appear under the rays of Senta's explosion.

He would have opened the curtains of his office and answered his curiosity, but the boy just nearly got blinded by the explosion, and, not that he was willing to admit it, this time Gwen's invention did inspire a veil of fear in his heart of heart.

Instead, he chuckled warmly. "How old are you," he paused to squint against the darkness, struggling to read the identification tag clipped to the breast pocket of the boy's green uniform, "…Alfred F. Jones?"

"Just Alfred, please," the youth snapped, only to withdraw, flustered, upon remembering whom he was talking with, "…sir."

Pursing his lips in amusement, Alistair put his laptop to sleep (_'Conserve energy,'_ his mind reminded him, _'you're not going to enjoy it much longer.'_), before folding his hands on the table and saying to the boy, "Well, Alfred, tell me: how old are you?"

"Nineteen, sir."

"Education background?"

"Hetalia Academy. I, uh, attended that school from kindergarten all the way up to high school, sir."

"Hetalia Academy?" Alistair muttered, raising an eyebrow. "I was there myself, and so was my son." At the look in Alfred's face he said, "No matter, Alfred. He was—what—eight years your senior. I suppose then you joined the Air Force."

A shadow of a smile formed on the young man's lips. "Bingo, sir."

Alistair tapped his own left eye. "How's your eye doing?"

Shrugging, he touched the fabric of the eye patch. "They said it should be fine, sir." Grinning ruefully, he added, "Though they also said I might not retain my full vision. Might have to look for another job. Consider other career options and think about another future that doesn't include the army."

"Your father will have no trouble finding, and securing, you a job."

"Yes, but—me and my father, sir—we have different opinions of what a job constitutes." Frowning, he said, "I'm never any good with paperwork. Don't have the patience for it, if you ask me."

Pointedly staring by this time, Alistair asked, "Will you be sad to leave the Air Force?"

"Frankly, yes, sir."

At his words, the older man leaned forward, his green eyes appearing black in the darkness to Alfred. "Tell me, Alfred, what happened at this morning, at eight thirty-two a.m.?"

The question reverberated on the thick walls of the dusty room, and Alfred repeated it under his breath, "…What happened?"

_What happened?_

XXX

What happened was the beginning of the last year of human civilisation. The end of the world, especially the modern world. For example, the death of electricity for all people (except for a handful who could afford the swiftly ascending prices of solar panels; really, the only ones who should be rejoicing were the producers of solar panels, with the catch that they needed electricity to produce said panels first). With electricity gone, solar panels becoming rarer than good ol' Stradivarius, and windmills having been torn down by developers in the sixties to make way for Earth's exponentially increasing population, manufacturers of palm oil candles were left with a pot of gold.

What happened was the end of whatever financial reserves governments of all countries had, and along with it whatever grudging support the messed up citizens of the world still had for them. From the beginning of 2030, taxes had been raised, all countries had been chipping in and depleting their funds for the sake of Senta, and everybody had been bearing it quietly but painfully, groaning under hushed breath and wishing for the damn reactor to simply start and inject some new life into this exhausted world. Damn all the fossil fuel that ever was, and damn the slowness of the formulation of Senta. Fossil fuel was projected to run out by 2085, on spring, while the first barrel of Senta was supposed to be produced by the summer of 2084. No schedule could ever be tighter. They got rid of cars and motorcycles and started using solar panels and public transport; those were never enough but those were all that they could get, and they forced themselves to get by. The waiting!

The waiting was what broke the people. The Maladies of the Eighties, they called the diseases: Depression Outbreak, Lethargy Outbreak, Outbreak of Outbreaks…. Then there were outbreaks of revolts, rebellions, and plain, basic violence. People were taking anti-depressants like vitamin C. In Europe, the mummy of Prussia was brought back to life by the Chaotism movement, who sacrificed human blood and money at its altar, giving form to a completely new being, raw and stranger than ever, New Prussia.

What happened, Alfred thought, as he tossed and turned on his bed in the Kirklands' house, was that he was flying Bonnie, his bomber, the most beautiful aircraft he had ever seen. It had a name before Bonnie, an ugly name made of letters and numerals. He saw it, saw the lady it could have been, and changed its name to Bonnie, not to mention painting its side with big bold capital letters BONNIE.

(That was the only time he ever used his influence on army matters. Alfred F. Jones, son of the late wife of the President of United States, Nicholas G. Jones…. Most people thought he cared too little of that title. He pointed out that the President had another son from a living wife, who needed more attention than the reckless Alfred did. Matthew Jones was a good, sound young man. Alfred was good and sound, but he had a raw side in his personality and a wild quality in his soul that would not go well with the publicity of the First Family.)

Bonnie and he were part of the second generation of P-Ops. No matter how corny P meant—it stood for Prodigy, he was proud of his achievement. Only three P-Ops teams existed in each generation, and they were the best of the best, crème de la crème: boys with big brawns, bigger brains, and the biggest survival instinct. P-Ops were all hush-hush and huge investments of money; no one could afford aircrafts anymore, but P-Ops had them, razor-dangerous beauties used sparely, running on a mixture of palm oil and fossil fuel. In compensation, the P-Ops were given the hardest tasks: whenever there was a battle, they went first and left last.

What happened was that he was on his way to Germany, to look at the trouble the New Prussia had caused. Then, eight thirty-two in the morning, GMT, the sky exploded.

The world ended.

The sky exploded white; never had he seen a white brighter, louder, or more hurtful. He could hear it in his ears, a keening, screeching sound. He smelled its aldehydic burst of scent, enveloping his nostrils, choking him until he had no choice but breathe in. It pierced his lungs not in the way needles did, but in the way photons did, a million acrid stabs to one's insides. The photons nestled on his skin, went past his bomber jacket and every layer beneath, causing his hair to stand in attention and his bones to tingle. Closing his right eye just in time did not mean he managed to salvage the left one. It had been staring at the direction of the Senta lab, off the shores of England, built from the remnants of Sealand.

The light went in and did not go out; his pupil refused to reopen, and he managed to find his way across the sky with only one eye open to land in Sheffield, UK, from which he was quickly escorted to London. The Prime Minister of the Great Britain had requested an audience with him. It was PM Kirkland who broke the story to him: the other pilots of P-Ops 2, his teammates, had all fallen, struck blind by the light.

Alfred shivered, thinking of the light, but he could not remember anything else except for the sheer noise of it. "Guess Lady Luck was smiling on me," he managed weakly, "I mean, what happened really?"

Mr Kirkland's eyes had turned curious. "The Senta lab exploded," he said, simply, and still smiling nonetheless. "The reactor and the whole structure of Sealand sank into the ocean. All that energy had to go _somewhere_, and it went to the air, as photons, as light."

"All of it…gone?"

"Gone and wasted."

From the corners of his eyes, Alfred could spy the bottom of the curtains covering the windows of Mr Kirkland's office. Not even the heavy fabric could hold back the light indefinitely. The light pushed and bulged against the dark green cloth, all claws and blades of rays, fingers creeping from the bottom of the cloth and fingering its way into the room….

Alfred felt nauseous. He crawled out of his bed, covered in cold sweat, and made his way to the toilet on his knees. The sound of his own vomit was a dull splash against the keening in his ears, and the odour of it was deplorably acidic, reminding him of the burning in his lungs. He was grateful, though, for the world in Mr Kirkland's house was dark, and he succumbed gladly, voluntarily, into the darkness.

The ceramic tiles were cold against his cheek. He thought of Bonnie; not for long, though, for soon the cold changed, transformed into a comforting coolness, and soon the world was swaying out of focus, out of reach, and nothing was breaking against his senses anymore, nothing but void.

XXX

**I do hope you like the first instalment. Constructive criticisms are not only welcome; it is practically begged for.**

**Signing out,**

_**Ilsa S. H.**_

**From Lost Duck Inc.**


	2. The Saint

_Gentle Worlds_

**Author's Note:**

**Rather than the story itself, let me call myself as a fan of Hetalia characters.**

**Disclaimer:**** Himaruya owns Hetalia. **

**Soundtrack:**

'**Mad World' by Michael Andrews**

'**Schindler's List' by City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra**

XXX

Spring, 2080

He had always thought that when kids started noticing the wrongs, it meant the adults had fucked up too much that even innocence could no longer let things slide.

Flashing his most charming grin to the young lady at the counter, he ran his hand through his mop of golden hair and mumbled, "Plenty of wrongs in this world, ain't there?"

The waitress gave him one look before scrunching up her face and sniffing at him. "You haven't seen anything at all, kiddo," she said through smiling teeth. Plastic had more warmth than her smile. She pushed his tray across the counter, saying loudly, "One double cheese burger and one supersize Coke. Next!"

His grin did not budge. Picking up his tray, he sauntered towards his table, at the far corner of the tiny establishment. His steps were wide and fluidly confident as he passed rows and rows of negative spaces, empty seats and polished tabletops.

Behind his back, not that he could see it but he knew it anyway, the poor waitress was staring dumbly at the void before the counter, at the lines of mopped ceramic tiles, at the lack of hungry customers queuing.

The wrapping of the burger was not only made of synthetic paper, but _cheap_ synthetic paper. He pushed it back gingerly, the paper wispy under the pressure of his fingertips, to reveal the plump bread beneath. The first bite was coarse and dry against the roof of his mouth; he washed it down with the Coke.

Suddenly, in a jolt of a motion, he looked up and stared at the flustered waitress in the eye. His grin was rather rueful this time, and his voice rang with an underlying bitterness as he said, across the expanse of carefully mopped ceramic tiles and chairs and tabletops whiter than bleach, "Twenty bucks for a burger set. Hard to believe, huh?"

The waitress seemed to sway on the spot she was standing, a willow against too strong a breeze. Her knuckles gripped the edge of the countertop, and he knew, without actually seeing, that those knuckles were turning white. "There are no more customers," she keened, swaying back and forth on the balls of her feet. "I'm the only one left."

She raised her arms in a wild gesture, throwing them across the establishment, as if she wanted to take the whole restaurant into her embrace. Behind her, the logo of the restaurant glowed and flickered on a screen: the golden arches flicked in and out of focus.

It was, he realised in half-horror, like an instalment of contemporary art. Because contemporary in 2080 was nothing else but despair and madness, framed by garish lucidity, and that was what she was becoming, with arms trembling and figure outlined by the dying light of an advertisement.

He finished his burger with the help of the Coke. When the soda was finished before the burger, he left the dry remnants to rot in its gossamer wrapping. He stood up carefully, without a sound, but his walk towards the counter was a noisy one, his sneakers squeaking against fresh floor and echoing on the glass walls.

The cash registry machine separated them. He took a small, transparent vial out of the pocket of his jeans and handed it across the machinery. Tiny, white, round pills rolled back and forth in the vial. The girl looked at it, transfixed.

His gesture for her to take it was friendly and unassuming, with the gentlest hint of insistence.

Her fingers were cold as she took it from his hand. Popping the cap, she poured three little pills onto her palm. She swallowed them in a lunge, aggressively, angrily, before munching away solemnly. Slowly, her brown eyes regained their focus, and it was then that she broke into small hiccups, tears running down her cheeks, blackened by her mascara.

"Thank you," she breathed out, and he patted her shoulder comfortingly. "My God, I'm such a mess. Such a mess…."

He gave a grimace, his brows furrowing over his blue eyes. "Nowadays, who isn't?" he said, shrugging. "So you're a mess. Big deal. Everybody is. This place where you are working is. Fast food chains are on their way to hell." He smiled crookedly. "I'll be sad to see them go."

He did not have the heart to say that it had gone anyway; burgers were simply no longer burgers, and sodas were diluted syrups.

The girl's fingers tightened around the vial. "People on the street drop down on their knees and weep randomly," she whispered. "They just drop down as if the sky has fallen onto their shoulders, blue and dripping, accompanied by a moon so lunar that it looks blue…." She looked up and gave him a teary smile. "This is a crazy year. What with the fossil fuel running out so fast, species going extinct…."

"And the Depression Outbreak," he reminded her quietly.

"…And the Depression Outbreak, global warming and all those shit. But mostly the Depression Outbreak." She stared at the vial glumly, cradling it in a palm like a child born from the folds of a red-blooded rose. "Now we all have to carry this—_thing_—around. Anti-depressants. What do they call it?" Her eyes were wandering, the pupils contracting. "…Vita. I always wonder what that word means."

The three soft taps travelled across air and his ears perked at the sound of them immediately. Beyond the glass doors of the fast food restaurant, stood the boy he had been waiting for.

"It means life," he sighed as he stretched his back, standing straight and rigid. "I have to be going now. You can keep the bottle. I have another just back at the hotel, and, to be honest, I never really get dependent on Vita."

Smiling hesitantly, the girl curled her fingers around the vial gratefully. "Funny how they name it life," she mused, before nodding. "Thank you, sir."

He was already walking halfway to the door when he heard the 'sir', and the word caused him to turn back and laugh. "Not sir," he chuckled. "My name is Alfred F. Jones, miss. I'm only fifteen."

If the girl had gasped in surprise, he did not hear it, for the door had closed quietly under his touch.

Kiku Honda, his classmate, threw no more than a curious side glance at the girl before smiling politely at Alfred. "Alfred," the boy greeted him warmly. "We have been waiting for you."

"Had your lunch yet?" Alfred asked amiably as they strode across the quiet mall. Their footsteps rang with minimum other echoes to disturb them. Alfred occasionally pondered why the silence could not be a meaningful silent; it rang like a void, a white blank expanse of depressing nothingness.

The Japanese boy inclined his head to one side. "With Heracles, yes," he said, and Alfred eyed the boy, only to gain no new knowledge from the gentle black eyes—they spoke nothing but of polite, detached courtesy and the familiar glint of a warning: _Do not trespass._

"With Heracles," Alfred drawled, and delighted in Kiku's response of a nod, an affirmation to Alfred's insinuation. It was a small victory in every sense of meaning: firstly, it meant Kiku trusted Alfred enough to admit basically everything; secondly, Kiku knew of the hidden meaning and decided to be honest with it, a rarity indeed among his family. Discretion, Alfred had since discovered, was a big thing in the Japanese royalty.

They were waiting by the mall's main entrance.

High-spirited Feliciano Vargas was the one who fist noticed the two arrivals. "It's Alfred and Kiku!" he announced, waving his hand vigorously. "It's Alfred and Kiku!" he repeated, in which his boyfriend, Ludwig Weillschmidt, put one hand on his shoulder.

Alfred watched as Ludwig leaned down and said to Feli's ear, "Calm down."

"You took an awful long time to get your lunch!" Gilbert, Ludwig's twin, bellowed, giving Alfred a high five. "Man, one more minute and I'd have gone and dragged you back by your collar!"

"Hey, it's not my fault entirely!" growled Alfred, thinking of the young waitress and the glass vial and Vita. He thought about life, but he did not like the thought, so he turned instead towards Kiku and said, "I met some trouble with the waitress. Isn't that right, Kiku?"

Kiku cocked his head to one side, before replying that yes, it was not Alfred's fault. Despite that, Heracles Karpusi, the Greek in their motley group, stepped forward to stand beside Kiku, eyeing Alfred suspiciously.

Somehow, Alfred delighted in that, too. The delight was a slow, thick kind of syrup, something that flowed over his soul and soothed all the holes. There was some right in the world; he tried to console himself. Ludwig's way of whispering in Feli's ear was _right_, and so was Kiku's reluctant admission, or Heracles' quiet protectiveness that bordered on possessiveness.

(Alfred had no idea where he should place Ivan Braginsky, the Russian boy. He was kind all right, and he hung out a lot with Gilbert, whom Alfred always regarded as his gaming friend. However, there was a spark in Ivan's eyes, a foreign coolness that did not entirely belong in a teenager's sunny side, that caused Ivan to forever straddle that fine line between _right_ and _wrong_ in Alfred's head.)

He was certain that Mrs Gwen Kirkland felt the same way towards Ivan. There was a slight pause in her cool, calculating, and somewhat humorous gaze when her eyes passed over Ivan.

The woman smirked, one hand buried in the pocket of her white lab coat. "Welcome, boys," said she, regarding each one of them with a playful wink. "Been a long time since I saw that Hetalia uniform. My boy once wore it himself."

She led them down hallways with transparent walls. Alfred could see the mall, a whitewashed, square-shaped building that sagged pitifully under the afternoon light. "We had lunch at the mall today," he spoke up. "It was terribly empty."

The woman's reply was smoother than a snake's skin. "Here at the Rozetta complex, the nerds assemble. As you may have guessed correctly," she turned to give Alfred a cheerful smile, "we tend to congregate in the labs rather than in malls."

Alfred did not like Mrs Kirkland, or at least not very much. Before coming to the Rozetta complex, he told Matthew that all this talk about inviting the crème de la crème of the Hetalia Academy to be the first civilians to see the Senta Reactor was all bull shit.

"They got attacked by the media because it was all hush-hush and suspicious," he said, his phone wedged firmly between his ear and shoulder.

Matthew's voice was soothing, even though the connection crackled and fizzled. "Then they invited you all."

Alfred scowled. "Thinking that just by inviting us, they have become more 'open' or whatever that shit."

When he did finally see the reactor, Alfred could not help but wonder why it should be kept under covers. There was nothing spectacular about it at all. It was a large machine, bullet-shaped, smooth and circular, with not a wire out of place. It looked like an extension of the white ceramic floor. It made Alfred think of voids, detachments, and negative spaces.

Suddenly he felt a sudden vertigo claiming over him, and he nearly doubled over. Quickly he grabbed for his vial, except that it was gone; he had given it to the young waitress.

The negativity of it all was _wrong_, and it made him sick in the stomach. He wished for a better world, a colourful world, a world that blinded him and made him die of happiness.

An intense world, he thought, an intense, breathing, living world.

There was someone approaching from the door of the lab, dressed in a green vest and white shirt, smooth brown trousers and impeccably brown tie. Alfred looked up.

It was a young man, or it was a boy—he could no longer remember. What he remembered was the man's eyes, which looked green enough to shame grass, or make a cat swallow its pride. Alfred liked blue and red and white, but he found himself liking this man's greenness. He sought solace in it.

He wanted to put his arms around the man's thin shoulders. If only he could have done that, he would have pulled the man back into his senses and warned him.

"Don't come here!" Alfred would have screamed across the lab, uncaring of Mrs Kirkland or his sanity or his friends or the name of Hetalia Academy embroidered on his school vest. "This thing's gonna blow up!"

But of course he did not.

XXX

Spring, 2084

The young man's screams woke Arthur up, and he immediately thought of his mother, who also liked to scream at night. "To chase away nightmares," Gwen reasoned, clutching at her shoulders and swaying from some mental chill.

Alistair had briefed Arthur of the existence of the boy. Arthur knew Alfred F. Jones, but doubted that Alfred remembered him. Once, in a spring four years ago, the son of the President of United States of America came and visited Rozetta, on a tour with his school friends.

He walked his way through the darkness of the house with the help of a candle. The door of the young pilot's room was unlocked, and Arthur stepped in without any hesitation, with the ease of a trained man.

The bed was empty, but that, too, was something expected. He made his way straight to bathroom, where he promptly flushed the bowl and placed the candle on the floor. It threw a sickly orange glow on a sweaty mop of golden hair. Arthur placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Alfred F. Jones?" he spoke against the darkness.

A bleary blue eye, milky with sleep and Depression, squinted against the candlelight. "By Jove, don't come here!" he shouted hoarsely, shoving Arthur's hand away. Arthur let it fall limp by his side. "This thing," he gasped, before shuddering violently, "is gonna blow up. It has taken my left eye in the future, in 2084…."

Arthur suddenly thought that Alfred might remember him after all.

Gently, he touched Alfred's eye patch. "You look like a pirate," he whispered. He shared his father's taste. He thought of his mother, bathed in the rays of the explosion.

The bathroom tiles were cold through the thin fabric of his pajamas. He reached for the vial he kept in his pocket. Popping the cap open, he shook out six little pills, whitish orange like tiny moons in the light of the candle. He swallowed three of them, before inserting the rest into Alfred's mouth.

The boy's lips were moist and warm under his fingertips. "Chew and swallow," he directed, and that was what the boy did.

As he leaned down to blow out the candle, Arthur thought he was going mad. There were silhouettes of witches on broomsticks on the floor, under the glow of the candle, and fairies were playing in the golden hay of the American boy's hair. _'Plenty of wrong in this world,'_ he sighed, before letting his body collapse on the cold, hard floor. The floor was unforgiving; his body thudded against it painfully, but he felt none of the pain. He reasoned that it was because he was going mad.

Then, because he was going mad, he curled up next to Alfred and promptly fell asleep, dreaming of reactors that could not blow up, a pair of healthy blue eyes against the white backdrop of the Rozetta complex, and mothers who did not cast shadows but gave out orange, glowing warmth instead.

XXX

**God, I screwed the whole chapter up! Your critics are very much begged for and welcomed. *sighs***

**Signing out,**

_**Ilsa S.H.**_

**From Lost Duck Inc.**


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